


Hold my body down

by GraceEliz



Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fae, Alternate Universe - Medieval, Death, Double Drabble, F/M, Force Sensitive Fox, Harm to kyber :(, M for themes, Semi-Sentient Kyber crystals, Tags in Chapter Notes, Whumptober, accidentally invented rituals and worldbuilding, highlights include, injuries and injury description
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-30
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:54:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 32
Words: 6,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26729242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GraceEliz/pseuds/GraceEliz
Summary: A drabble for Fox, a drabble for Riyo.Force Sensitive Fox reading order for Fox: two, thirteen, nineteen, twenty-four, thirty, elevenMedieval AU: twenty, thirty-oneFae AU to become an independent fic: twenty-eight, seventeenOther drabbles can be read as connected or parallel.
Relationships: Riyo Chuchi/CC-1010 | Fox
Comments: 53
Kudos: 60
Collections: Commander Fox





	1. One: Restrained

**Author's Note:**

> Ffs read the chapter notes, it's whumptober guys, it's supposed to hurt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Characters tied by rope/handcuffed to wall

The ropes dig tight into his ribcage, squeezing and creaking. If he moves too fast, pushes too hard, the huge heavy ropes will break him. They’re rough, coarse, salty and tarred, the type of rope used to hold ships in place. Yes, he remembers, that’s right. He is on a mission. Fox breathes in, and his ribs creak. When he shifts to the left to alleviate the ache of lower back he gasps: the movement stretches at raw skin and tight muscle. Burns off the ropes. Their weight pulls his shoulders into an unhealthy curve which aches something almost unbearable.

_She is cuffed to a railing in a bright room. One of her own rooms, she realises, and rolls her eyes. For a kidnapping attempt, this is one of the shoddier ones. Damaged good make poor prices; everyone knows that. There’s blood crusting her face – it feels like blood – and her wrists are raw under the metal handcuffs, fingers cold and pressed hard to the railings they’ve tied her to. It is a good thing, Riyo thinks, that the heating hasn’t been on. Rather cold and the bite of circulation cutoff than the stickiness that would result from being burned.  
_


	2. Two: Collars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Collars - the symbols of control and possession. Force Sensitive Fox. Referenced Palpatine.

Red-on-white armour hides many sins. Tattoos, scars, bacta patches, makeshift medical aid, all tucked and protected by the protective layers. Then there’s the symbolic: the words tattooed into his skin, brothers first; the short curved scar Riyo gave him. Above all, skin-tight, the collar. He doesn’t call it a collar, of course. A leather thread, a tiny crystal hanging off it. A tracker. A gift he can sense, but can’t use. A threat and a bribe all in one: if he obeys, then he will be taught to use his gift, so long as it is to the Emperor’s discretion. 

_The pendant tucks into the divot of her collarbone, sharp edges and curves. Fox doesn’t have to wear it any longer, not now the Emperor tracks him using his Force Signature, so she is told. He draws away from her, now, afraid that the Emperor can pull her memories out of his mind. The crystal on the pendant is dead. It used to glow like his eyes, low gold, from within, but now it’s just an empty Kyber-shard. Empty and broken, like the rest of them in this empty world, where they are told they are free, if they obey.  
_


	3. Three: held at gunpoint

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As title implies. Fox: is snarky, the cat meme.  
> Riyo: someone dies, very unpleasant.

Why is it always him who winds up with the blaster pressed between his eyebrows? Out of every CC in the army, every Commander in the GAR, Fox seems to wind up facing down some trigger-happy idiot every other Thursday. Sure, he thinks, his brothers are on the front line, but he’s the one who can’t go three days before some di’kute think he’s an easy shot. “Just, don’t,” he pleads tiredly. “Let us go, you fool.” Riyo and Thire heave heavy sighs in perfect, practised, unison behind him. The git holding the blaster twitches in very poorly hidden fury. 

_It feels like every time Riyo and Fox try to have a date, a no-nonsense, no-explosions, disaster-free date where they can eat and dance and watch the stars, someone turns up with a blaster, and one or both of them feels cold metal against their foreheads. Today is Fox’s turn. Perhaps, she thinks in exasperation, meeting Thire’s dark eyes, their lives would be a lot easier if Fox stopped antagonising the bastards of the undercity. “Say hello to your progenitor for me,” sneers the being holding the blaster, and then it blows and she screams, terror ripping through her bones.  
_


	4. Four: collapsed building

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes all you can do is wait. Under the rubble or in your own mind - trapped is trapped, right?

He groans, coughs; his ribs protest the sharp movement. For a moment he gasps through the pain, praying for the knot of agony in his diaphragm to disperse. Something is digging into his thigh, sharp pain radiating down both legs. He lift his head, gasping still. Everything is dark. He can feel the dust gritty on his face, his fingers where he can rub his left hand on his armour. His right forearm is trapped under his back; likely damaged. He can’t feel the fingers of that hand. “Do you copy,” he chokes out. Nobody responds. “Help me,” he begs. 

_There is no news and she fails to convince herself that means good news. The commander and a squad of Shinies are missing, suspected trapped in a fallen building. Who could tell why it had blown, Thire had said grimly, but she knew what he suspected. Her Fox was trapped, with no way out. Why couldn’t she stop crying? He would be fine. He always was fine. He would come back to her soon. Just that morning, she’d told him to be safe, and he’d smiled and said to her Don’t I always and she said Yes of course -  
_


	5. Five: rescue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For To-Do List. If you know, you know. Murder Strut, mmmm.

He fails to understand how she can weigh so little. He and his men are heavy, solid with bone and muscle and that layer of protective fat which keeps them alive – they’re no false show-offs like other Coruscanti who don’t seem to understand how the human body functions. All their strength makes them heavy, heavier than people expect them to be: it means they are consistently surprised by how little other people weigh. Riyo, limp in his arms as he marches, weighs nothing. Her hand falls from her stomach to hang like she’s dead, her head lolling against his bicep. 

_Riyo comes to very slowly, gaze filled by white and red. What she can feel of her body is pressed against something hard, and there’s a metronome-like beat in her ears, in her very body. Footsteps, she realises woozily, steady footsteps. She is – being carried. Yes, cradled in his arms like she weighs no more than wool, and maybe to him she does. Above her – no, them, is the yellow tinted blue sky of Coruscant. She can taste nothing but dryness. But it’ll be fine. Fox has her, safe and warm, held to his armour which is a second skin._


	6. Six: "get it out"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "What about you," says Fives.

ARC Trooper Fives is a very intelligent man. Not everyone makes it to ARC; it takes a great deal of resilience to survive the loss of your batch. The evidence he has amassed is circumstantial at best, but he knows a fabrication when he sees one. This is no lie. “It’s in our heads?”

“Yes, sir.”

He glares up at Stone. “Start with the Shinies: I want every trooper possible free. Get it out.”

“What about you,” asks Fives. Fox says nothing. He is too close to the Chancellor for them to risk operating; his mind is not his own.

_She stares aghast. “They can force you to do things?” Riyo cannot comprehend such a vile thing, such a curse to bear – she can’t imagine the weight of such a burden on her friend’s heart. “Get them out! I’ll help you, we can take this to the Delegation, to the Council -”_

_“Not us,” he says quietly. “Not me. He can’t know. My chip has to stay.”_

_She is shaking in fear, crying the helpless tears of bone-deep terror. “Your mind,” she tries to say, but her words are frozen. “He could hurt you.” She’s too late: he already has.  
_


	7. Seven: Carrying

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When she was a child her father used to carry her to bed, or her mother would carry her into the sunshine.

His brothers’ arms are solid, their shoulders hard under his arms. Pain stabs down his back, the muscles either side of his spine. One more step, he tells himself, one more step to lessen their burden, one more step closer to whatever passes off as salvation among these godless men. Steady, they tell him, holding him tight; steady they call up the ropes, as they tie him in and tug. He is lifted up, towards distant light where people scurry about. Carried by his brothers to safety. He blacks out before they get there, drawn down by pain. Carried away. 

_When she was a child her father used to carry her to bed, or her mother would carry her into the sunshine. There was never a point when her father told her she was too old to be carried around; he was strong, not tall but strong. He used to carry her brothers too, on his back. The Temple is burning, ash rising slowly up. There is no wind to carry it off. She wishes there was someone to carry her to bed, carry her away free like ash on the breeze. But there is nobody, not anymore, who would.  
_


	8. Eight: isolation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He fights alone, the first of his men, stands alone in his agony to give the others – the littles, they’re practically littles – a chance to live.

A new shipment of Shinies, a new part of his soul shrivelling and blackening in his chest, a new pain to carry with him. They’re alone, here. None of their brothers bother with them. He gets it, but can’t they see this is his war? He fights alone, the first of his men, stands alone in his agony to give the others – the littles, they’re practically littles – a chance to live. His batch won’t talk to him. Who can say why. He fastens on his armour. He is isolated. There is the Guard, and there is the Commander. They’re alone. 

_Now that she is here on Coruscant she’s lonely. Her sister is far away, her brothers busy with their lives back home. Her aides are sweet and strong, but they’re not her friends yet. Even the Senators she’s known since childhood aren’t. Loneliness, she’s realising, really does hurt. It’s why she chose to talk to the Commander of the Guard. He looked lonely. They all do, but she won’t pressure the young ones. Young? How old are they? Young to be so alone, on a world which hates them in an ungrateful galaxy. Her apartment isn’t home. It’s too empty.  
_


	9. Nine: take me instead

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> DEATH and also PAIN and yeah it's whumptober I'm not sorry

Riyo is pale with her fear, the blade digging into her throat. Blood drops down her skin, tracking down into the fabric of her dress. Her eyes are wide, hair askew. The weight of his blaster in his hands is unwieldy, reminds him of fragility, breakable bone. “Take me,” he coaxes, “and let her go. You only need a body. Use mine, use me,” offers Fox, and he knows the plan goes ahead. If he fails, they will die and his men will be unprotected. He can’t fail, he must make himself the target. “I have a high resale value.”

_If she doesn’t think and act fast, someone is going to get hurt. The men who protect her tense up, blasters steady. She has to think, but she can’t, not with a knife held to her friend’s neck. He fixes his eyes on her. They have the same tattoo on their cheeks: they got them together when they turned 19. They have the same birthday. “Take me,” she blurts, he glares, “take me.” The man shrugs, then smiles cruelly; the blade flashes in the light, and blue blood is spurting out as her friend chokes on it, and she screams._


	10. Ten: internal bleeding

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fox: at least all the blood is where it's meant to be  
> His medic: boss, no

“Careful,” he grunts to Stitch, unable to quite banish the snarl from his voice. His medic winces, hands drawing uncertainly away. His hands, Fox’s hands, their hands. An army’s hands. Dexterity tenderness, though? That is what sets Stitch apart. Careful hands. “Internal bleeding, where the blood’s meant to be,” he croaks, managing to crack a grin, fox-like, at his vod’ika. Stitch stares incredulously. Yeah, he wouldn’t want to treat his CO for internal injuries on his first shift either. He does feel kinda bad about that. Stitch connects up the bacta drip, shaking his head at the overlapping purple bruises. 

_One of her dearest friends is laid out on greyed sheets, hooked up to the pipes and tubes and lines of bacta and medicines. Her chest rises and falls slowly; her skin is pale, the horrible marks hidden under the quilt._

_“What happened?”_

_“An ex-lover, so they say,” whispers Riyo, tracing her hand gently over the fine blue skin of her hand. “Took out a hit and beat her himself.” Ruptures, she remembers hearing, danger and high risks of complication. What will she do, she wonders, if the dear woman never recovers? If the bleeding kills her, invisible and deadly?  
_


	11. Eleven: defiance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Force sensitive Fox, death, Riyo

The Emperor sneers, wrinkles and fury. Kill him, orders the voice, kill him, ten-ten, do as you are ordered to. Please stop, begs Fox as his hand rises up, short dagger tight in it. Stop this, I don’t want this, but his hand moves, inexorable. In his left is a knife, and his right holds a saber, slender but strong, cortosoid-lined. The last of his brother’s armour. Ten-ten is faceless, expressionless except for sick-gold irises. Fox is warm eyes and warm skin and protective rage. He lights the saber. I defy thee, he hisses, and ten-ten dies. Fox dies too. 

_Simple acts of defiance can achieve miracles, she knows. A Jedi told her that when she was a child. By one act of defiance, a destiny can change; a galaxy altered. With her defiance she became a Senator, saved her people, her family. She walked out of the Senate and swayed thousands when the Clones were to be decommissioned. Defiance takes courage, and sacrifice, but how hard it is to sacrifice what she must when he is warm and alive and she knows the softness of his lips and coarseness of his skin. Decisions are made. She doesn’t make hers.  
_


	12. Twelve: broken

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fox's trust is broken;  
> Injury description and death in Riyo’s scene

“How could you do such a thing? I am astounded at the depth of your betrayal of our cause; surely you cannot be so callous as to wish our continued abuse? I believed your faith aligned with our own. I believed, foolishly, you could help us. Now of course I see that I should have restricted my love to my brothers alone. You have brought us nothing but pain. So, in response to your request, I must refuse. Break the faith, break yourself. What remains of my heart wishes you failure. May all you brought upon us fall on yourself.”

_Her bone grates in her hand when she flexes her fingers. She stares at her hand, blue, her own hand, yet feels nothing at all beyond the grinding sensation of shattered bones. When he broke her fall, she believed they would be safe. After all, reasoned the young woman, hadn’t he always kept her safe? With her good hand she lifts his head to her lap, flinching at the way it lolls back, unnatural, his body twisted in a manner even he couldn’t survive. Slowly, the ache begins to grow, pulsing up her arm into her whole body. “Wake up.”  
_


	13. Thirteen: oxygen mask

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nobody dies, nobody in particular pain, Fox has his Kyber crystal.

Awareness comes all at once: he is, after all, a Fett. Second to the knowledge of alertness comes the alarm of the loss of his crystal on his skin where she (she, her name is a song he cannot sing) should vibrate against his throat. Next he notices the scratch of the mask, the clarity of the air he rasps a breath of. What happened? More importantly, where is his crystal, which is so much a part of him? He scrabbles intently at the mask, but gentle fingers pull his hand away, and his crystal is pressed to his palm.   
. 

_They sat her on a crate near the downed transport with a warm blanket over her shoulders, a hot tea in her hands. She isn’t expected to finish it. Another of the brothers, uniform red and white but with the medic symbol on several places of his armour, crouched and talked her through the oxygen mask. She is to use it at least once every three breaths, and to use the blanket to protect her lungs from smoke. It is hard in her hands, not heavy, but solid, grounding, something to concentrate on. Lift, fit, inhale, hold, lower, exhale. Repeat.  
_


	14. Fourteen: branding

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry, only not that sorry

They scalded it into them, him first, then the Shinies, fresh from Kamino into this hell because his reports don’t get through. Commander, they’d named him, then burned it into his bicep under the sword-cog symbol, a brand, ownership. Property of Coruscant City, ten-thousand clones, sentience unacknowledged, because you can brand a droid, but you can’t brand a sentient without being a slaver. Slavery is illegal. Fox hands his new children a bottle of salve. It will stop hurting, replaced by new agonies, until the brand on their shoulders is just to horrify their vode with on a rare reunion.

_What is left of the marks he left on her body have become brands; she wishes for them never to fade, to be refreshed every night or morning for the rest of her life and his through every change the galaxy can throw at them; but of course that can’t happen, not any more, not since the accident. How very like her mother she sounds: I haven’t left home since the accident. No accident, though. She wishes he’d branded her his own somehow. She thinks about the brand on his shoulder, and fetches some sketch-paper; his brand, her next tattoo.  
_


	15. Fifteen: science gone wrong

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mild body horror.

White is the colour of nightmare. Blue is strength, and black means freedom. He sees all this as though through stained glass. Seeing through glass, steel, brick, is not a challenge. He coughs, another vicious tooth falling into his palm. Stress speeds up the change process. They’re dripping dark-red, colour of vivacity. Joy is red. He blinks tightly, still able to see, he can’t stop seeing. Do his eyes bleed too? His skin, like all his batch, is hypersensitive to changes in the air; like a serpent. Or a dragon, so they say. He tastes electricity arc through the air. 

_They’re damaged goods, inhuman, expensive experiments. Look at them, the people say, they don’t feel pain, do you think they can get scared? They flinched then, but maybe that was reflex. Riyo clenches her fist, furious. They’re people, all of them, they’re people, she wants to scream. But she’s afraid. Even the quiet ones scare here; they know things. Move too fast, too quiet. Bleed too sluggishly. They’re just – wrong. No, they don’t feel pain, Fox told her. Their teeth fall out and grow back in weeks. Bones fuse back in hours. They can’t turn off their gifts. They’re omniscient._


	16. Sixteen: shoot the hostage

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Choices have to be made in simulations in training on Kamino; choices have to be made on the job, and redemption will not be granted. (implied child death)

They’re offered a choice, in this particular scenario: they can take the hit or pass it on. In this operation the choice is an innocent. A child. A Little. He is at least four times her size. Did they choose a girl because they thought that would have more impact? A little togruta girl, blue and beige, nubs and tiny lekku. They thought they’d be more distressed than facing their own Littles. And the thing is, the things is, Fox can’t make this choice. Everyone else has. They haven’t admitted, yet. He is meant to protect. Not to shoot children. 

_Fox eyes the shot, his hands still and steady. Every other Guard has set down their weapons, knelt back onto their heels. They look like they’re praying. She knows they’re talking over their internal comms, can see the evidence of it in tiny shifts of weight. “I have the shot,” Fox says oh too quietly, and then he sits up and removes his bucket and gloves and says something she doesn’t understand in a language not quite mando’a, she recognises mando’a, and all his brothers turn away from him, and she knows: there will be no redemption for her lover.  
_


	17. Seventeen: dirty secret

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time for some Darker Riyo, don't we all think?

“It’s alright,” she coos, cradling his cheeks in her blue hands. She is above him, perched on the end of her bed, a goddess for whom he is supplicant, a mercy he can do naught but strive towards. “It’s alright, darling,” says his Lady, “I will keep you safe, you understand that? They won’t touch you,” she promises, and he closes his eyes. For that she’d have to own up to him, out there where people watch her, where she holds court, and he is only a dirty secret. He waits in the dark, out of reach of the spotlight. 

_Surely no man can be more beautiful than he, knelt on the soft rug, hands curled gently on his thighs, muscles relaxed under his blacks. What more could she want than this? Oh, there is always more to take, she knows. She could hold him here, have him wait for her, have him wear what she wants him to – nothing, or everything, layers for him to strip for her. She could take him places in a sharp suit or whatever the Mandalorians wear, show him off to the Court, but she won’t. He is hers. Her secret. Her beautiful secret.  
_


	18. Eighteen: phobia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A shiny is scared of his brother's new find, and Riyo finds herself trapped in the flaming nightmare of her darkest memories.

“Hey now,” he scolds, curtly, “leave your brothers alone.” The Shiny in questions rolls back on his heels. 

“It’s only an insect,” says the boy petulantly. “I don’t see what the problem is.”

Fox sighs, plucking the tub of insects out of the Shiny’s cupped palm. “The issue is, your vod is afraid.” The boy looks guilty. “He is scared, why should he be more afraid? Are we not afraid our every waking moment? There are enough dangers on this planet, enough predators, too many people who will hunt you. Hurt you. Why make it worse preying on a phobia?”

_She recoils from the open flames. Even now when her life is on the line she can see nothing but the face of her brother in abject terror as he shoves her from the burning rubble of their birth-home. Beneath her feet the floor cracks, sending her stumbling. The Guard calls out for her, white armour stained in soot, reaching as far as he can, and the flames lick and she screams and he tells her if she doesn’t reach for him she will fall to her death, but all she hears is her brother screaming at her to run.  
_


	19. Nineteen: survivor's guilt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> *plays Wait For It three times to write these to*

There are only so many times he can run through katas with his yellow blade before he starts to see his brothers in the path of the saber. Yet he dare not stop, slow the strike, dodge, for then his Master will bring more than ghosts into his training space. I am my own, he tells himself, I am unique and I shall survive this, but it’s hard to keep living after all he lost. Why should he? Why him? His brothers loved, felt, fought and died. He has to be better. If he is better they get to live. 

Lie in wait, she tells him, you’re not stationary. You are the fox, a hunter, you are waiting for him to slip so you can strike. But his guilt chords with her own, with the belief that if she’d been better then her fellow Senators would have ended the war, that she should have been able to save his brothers and they could have saved the Jedi. But they didn’t, she didn’t, and she breathes and that breath is a duty to those fallen to keep fighting. That’s what they are now. Soldiers for those they loved. Lying in wait.  
__


	20. Twenty: medieval

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Medieval and field medicine? Don't mind if I do.

He kneels at her side, armour a comfort, hand splayed over the wound to her shoulder. His crystals hum, vibrating against his hip, the shards hanging about his neck cooing in sympathy. Healing power pools in his palm, spilling invisibly towards the Lady’s torn skin, knitting her back together like a needle through sailcloth. He tears a bolt off his tunic, sighing at the loss of Fett-teal cotton, packs it against the wound to keep it clean. Magic only goes so far towards healing wounds left by bandits. “I must go now,” he says, “back to my father the King.”

_Riyo sighs. “I wish you would take me with you, away from the Dark Emperor,” she answers, knowing he will tear this event out of her mind, make this Knight and his kindness bitter to think of. His armour is in the Mando style, shining with red highlights, Fett colours decorating his body. She thinks he is proud of it, of the lightsaber at his hip, of the crystals she can see glowing where he pulled them from his armour. He has the magic, which the Emperor forbids. He is everything she has been carefully raised to think lesser of.  
_


	21. Twenty-one: chronic pain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> it's the ouchies (seriously who tf is inspiring these summaries)

Stitch rubs the back of his neck. “I don’t really see what else I can do without access to a more comprehensive and affordable healthcare system,” he admits, turns to the scans of Fox’s shattered knee. “See, we gotta fix it, but we can only give you bacta wraps and even with the advanced healing factor you’ll feel this always, your entire life,” and Fox sighs heavily. He is long resigned to moving through the aches of his overworked body; the low twinge of his shoulder, the ache of his back, the piercing stabs of poison-gas damaged nerves. 

_When she awakes she knows she’s done. It hurts, almost too much to breathe through, but she must. Eyes closed, Riyo sucks in half a breath, then a little more, pressing her hands to her chest to try assuage the pain, to try ease the clench of her lungs and the smoke-taste and she sobs, chokes, barely hears her Aides rush to administer her medication through the blinding crushing agony she knows could linger for days. They carefully guide her to sit up, move her arms to open her chest; gradually she regains sight, hearing, the taste of clean air._


	22. Twenty-two: withdrawal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Withdrawal symptoms

He shakes with it, the need to reach out and take, but he resists. His body, even damaged as it is, can only handle so many stims and medications in one cycle, so he has to sit here with pain fogging his vision, his brain, his awareness of every part of his body, and just wait. Every half cycle, he takes a handful of medication strong enough, he has been assured, to down a kriffing loth-wolf in all its violent might. It’s the weaning which hurts, he’s assured, but he still aches, craves freedom from being hurt. Freedom, like death.

_His hands are huge and strong, scarred and heavily lined much as she would have expected. Scarred and coarse is of course how his hands have always been. The tremble, however, is new. “I am sorry,” he sobs, curled over her bathtub, shaking, “Ree I am sorry.” All she can do is shake her head, lean against his back and hold the blanket over his shoulders when he leans over and retches once more, hair limp with sweat, skin pale, eyes drawn. “You should leave me,” he whispers, and she shakes her head. Never, she shall never leave him alone.  
_


	23. Twenty-three: exhaustion

“Get some shut-eye,” he orders the boys, leaning against the wall with both DCs bared, balanced on his knees. “I’ll keep watch. We’re safe enough here,” promises Fox, eyeing the small children, the children of the night he calls them, watching with keen eyes the squad of soldiers tucked into an alley. His boys fall rapidly asleep, never having known comfort. The barracks, the streets, it’s one and the same. He’s tired enough he could too fall asleep as he is, and he has slept in a bed. Is she waiting up? His brothers will be, radio silence is exhausting. 

_Vigils are lonely. She is holding vigil now in her silent apartment, her Aides sleeping. The drapes are pulled back, the many lights of the city glaring in, bright enough she hasn’t got the lamps on. Down there, somewhere, the Commander and a squad of his boys are waiting out the night after a three-day chase. Have they had any sleep? Are they comfortable? Before her eyes the lights blur and she squeezes them shut, almost falling asleep there and then. But she won’t, she will always wait up for him. Even if it takes three days, she’ll be waiting.  
_


	24. Twenty-four: forced mute, sensory deprivation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Palpatine prefers ten-ten's efficiency to Fox's morals, and Riyo tries to stay positive.

“You are to be silent, remember?” sneers the Emperor, a wave of his hand sending a pulse of the Force over his still body, the Dark sinking into his throat with cloying stickiness. He tips his wrinkled face, curious. “Perhaps this should be made permanent,” he croaks, and Fox can’t avoid the panic; he knows that when the Emperor talks of muteness then he means that Fox is in his way and he needs ten-ten, the ruthless efficiency of Jango Fett’s clones. He is muted not only by the Dark but by his own cruelty, muted in his own mind. 

_There is nothing. Rope about her wrists, digging in and chafing. Her feet bare, the air still and warm, no sensation as there should be in her apartment which is kept cold like her homeworld. Fox grumbles tolerantly about it when he visits. Where is he? He will come for her. She will hear him any minute, miracle through the earmuffs, feel his large hot hands on her shoulders then untying her wrists and kissing the skin tenderly how he saw her Aides do once, he will bring her back to the real world beyond the dark silent stillness overloading._


	25. Twenty-five: blurred vision

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A training incident as cadets, and Riyo wakes up in a hospital.

“Can you see anything? Ten-ten?” 

He chokes, pulling air into his lungs. “Not ten-ten. And no.” 

There are hands on his face, tipping his head side to side. It feels like his eyes are bleeding. “I think you’ll be okay?” 

“S’not a comfort if you say it like that,” he grumbles at Bly. “Can’t see.” blind, he swats his brothers away. “Let me up.” 

“We should have the Doc look at you,” Bly insists, backed up by a grunt from Wolffe and high sound from Ponds. Kind of a squeak. “In case you’re hurt.” Being blind makes his hearing better. 

_Everything is blurred, her friends blue blobs. That must be a Guard, she surmies, all white and fuzzy red patches. Maybe red. Brown? someone leans over her, dark tones. “Senator Chuchi. Can you see?”_

_“Only outlines,” she says, or tries to say and can’t, voice breaking like so much glass. “I’m not blind.”_

_The doctor hums again. “It’s a good thing the Guard know the fastest roads here. We wouldn’t have saved it without their speed. You must close them now, or your eyes will not fuse. The transplant was a difficult operation.”_

_The what? What does he mean?_


	26. Twenty-six: migraine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fox's Shiny can't catch a break. Riyo's Aide is ill.

One of his Shinies is groaning into his neck, clutching weakly at his shirt. He buries his head tighter into his neck, so Fox hums very quietly, as soothingly as he can make the noise. It’s something many of his batchers can’t understand, but he remembers that Bly used to have horrific migraines, ones which they had to hide. Stitch will have some kind of painkiller, something to make poor El-El feel better, some way they won’t have to send for treatments. He bounces his boy slightly so he can open the door, humming soft apologetically at his boy’s whimpering. 

_“I can call for a medic,” she offers, brushing Lucille’s hair from her eyes. “I know the Guard will have something they can do for you.”_

_Lucille pats her hand, eyes still closed under the cold flannel. Riyo can barely see anything with how dark the room is. “Won’t help.”_

_She sighs. “Surely there is something to be done?”_

_“No,” Lucille croaks, then flaps her hand. “Ree, bucket, bucket!”_

_She barely gets her friend upright fast enough. She sighs, and pings for Fox to go see if Stitch can help her. Today is going to be miserable for poor Lucille._


	27. Twenty-seven: earthquake

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fox's short trip goes sideways, and Riyo has a nightmare.

“Hold the line,” Fox bellows as loud as he can, voice ringing off the trembling walls, “hold the line!” If they break the line then innocent civilians will stumble into the danger zone where the plates of this planet have thrown molten rock far too near to the surface. The heat is scorching, in danger of causing trouble. They’re all sweating, buckets on except the Commanders, echoing their warnings off buildings. One begins to chant, and he joins in the old mando’a song they learned as cadets, “eight tones till the time to wake, eight tones working on our feet.” 

_Her mother is screaming; all she is conscious of is that she can’t keep her feet, she is on the floor no matter how hard she tries to run for her parents, so she crawls. Dust is everywhere, even now she can taste it on her tongue. She is both awake and yet not, stuck in the memory of the earthquake which struck when she visited her grandmother, the one which hurt none of her family, and yet she can feel herself thrown around. With a start she wakes up, startling breathlessly upright, to find her room still. Completely still._


	28. Twenty-eight: hunting season

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prequel to chapter seventeen ;) at some point I'll make this into an Actual Fic, probably a oneshot.

If tonight is his last night as a somewhat-free man, he’s going to hold his boys as tight as he can. Come the morn, he will be unleashed into the city to run, to flee from the greed and lust of the Court. He’d been given a choice: him, or one of the untouched Shinies. Their youthful innocence attracts the Court-goers of all, makes them desirable to the Senators who take part in the Hunt, but he refuses to permit their filthy hands on his boys, any of them, if it is in his power to act as a barrier.

_She dresses in her most exotic outfit, the one which makes all who see her drool, the one which she has caught him glancing at and through. Her beautiful Commander is to join the Hunt and she can’t wait to track him down, pin him to a wall and claim him with her bruises on his neck. Her fellows would show off their prizes, strut them through the halls of Court, but she will keep hers in her rooms where he belongs. Yes, she muses, he will be an absolute joy for this season’s catch. She may even keep him.  
_


	29. Twenty-nine: reluctant bedrest

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fox's shattered knee, Riyo breaks an ankle.

In his own opinion, there is no reason he cannot at least work in his office. He’ll even leave his plates off, wear some soft-shell. Signatures don’t require walking around on his cracked knee. If he just moves left a little he’ll be able to reach his comm and coerce a Shiny into fetching his work. A little further – 

“Oh, fuck!” Stitch and an orderly run in, but he can’t hear beyond the consuming agony of having landed on his leg. Everyone in Med will know what happened. Nobody else barks the word out quite like he does. He burns. 

_She’s tried to assure him that she’s fine to get up, be around the apartment with the aid of her crutches, but he always just points to his taped knee, reminding her that just because she thinks she is safe she probably is not. So she, with reluctance, allows him to bring her datapads and monitor her painkillers and pat her leg gently even as he sighs at the pain in his own. They should both be resting up, but the Emperor likes Fox. He never rests, can’t afford the time away from his boys, can’t even sleep one night._


	30. Thirty: possession

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Force Sensitivity is more of a curse than a blessing, in these days.

His crystals sob, scream, but ten-ten can’t do much to soothe them. His vision is tainted red, red by blood of his brothers soaking into his skin, red like his Master’s red crystals. How would he soothe anyway? Darkness doesn’t understand sympathy, no matter how much love burned in Fox before the Master took him. Took? Crushed? Constrained? Doesn't matter, ten-ten's thoughts tell him, none of it matters because Fox is now gone; the Master made him go down deep into his mind hide, hidden, far from the pain where he won’t come back. He can’t ever reclaim his body.

_She doesn’t know who is in her Fox’s mind; ten-ten isn’t real. He can’t be. She won’t let him be. If he is indeed real, then she must face up to the possibility that she won’t be getting her lover back. How do you know, asked her friends, and she’d shrugged and said I can see his Kybers and they’re dead, dead, they were him and they’ve stopped glowing and now it hangs around my neck and Fox is dead. I will never get him back. Ten-ten is not my Fox. He’s just a placeholder. The Emperor killed his mind.  
_


	31. Thirty-one: whipped

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set after day twenty: medieval. A gaggle of the Fett sons have been captured, and there is nothing Lady Riyo can do to avert Governor Tarkin's cruelty.

The punishment of course will be appropriate,” the jailor announces, promises, hands lingering on the key to the cell. “Each of these men is of the Fetts; it is believed an appropriate message must be sent of our... nonconformance the King’s schemes.”

The woman – Lady Riyo – winces. “I am certain that this is not necessary, Governor. The King will surely accept his sons’ lives as recompense.”

The Governor shrugs. “This will make certain. I would not have these witches and their magicks haunt this land longer than must be.” Fox snarls, crystals sobbing from their pouch on the Governor’s belt. 

_“The crystal-wielder first, I think,” the Governor says, and she gasps as the one who healed her is yanked to his feet. His brothers protest, silencing at a sharp word from him in the language of the Fetts. She follows the guards and Governor to the post, protesting with words she cannot quite hear herself saying, distracted as she is by the fear of the boys._

_“This is inhuman!”_

_“So are they,” the Governor sneers, flashing his fingers for the lashing to commence. “Fifty for a start, eh?” Riyo raises her voice in protest. “For every protest, Lady, another lash.”  
_


	32. Bonus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eight: isolation and fourteen: branding can be considered linked. This is a bonus scene, ft Wolffe and Fox.

"You're biting at air, Wolffe," he sighs, exhausted still from the chase. Where lies thrill when a thing is repetition, again and again and again? "They're never going to give us sentience."

Wolffe throws himself on the beanbag. "Have a bit of hope, brother."

Fox throws his hands up. "Hope? What hope is left? They will not give us sentience, Wolffe. They won't. You cannot brand a sentient being without a slavery case, and do you think they want that? You think they'll accept sentience after they branded us? The Guard is Senate property. Not even GAR, like you. You belong to the Republic, but we belong to the Senate. They're never accepting sentiency if it means us ten thousand require basic rights."

Wolffe recoils. "But -"

"But nothing. It won't work. Keep trying, keep biting the wind. It won't work."


End file.
